Teaching Ordinal Numbers Using Favorite Toys
As you can probably tell from my recent blog posts, I have a student right now who really loves Star Wars. I like to use his interests as a teaching opportunity whenever possible, so we lined up these toy figures and practiced ordinal numbers with them. I modeled this first by putting the cards in their correct locations, while saying for each one, "The Storm trooper is first...Yoda is second" and so on. After this, I let the student put the labels on. After the student label
Fun with Ten Frames (And Also Learning Place Value and Number Sense)
Ten frames are a simple and effective way to teach students about concepts such as: How many more you need to make ten (addition), Exploring different ways to make ten (this promotes fluency with addition, as you learn to quickly figure out addition and subtraction problems because you understand the relationship between 7 + 3 = 10, 10 - 3 = 7, etc.). Indirectly helps prepare students for the concept of fractions (particularly tenths) because you've explored parts of a whole.
Writing an Animal Report (Free Template and Visual Supports)
One of my students loves animals, so I'm using that to practice writing and research skills. I wanted a really basic template that he could fill in, just to get used to the ideas of looking up information and writing it down. We started out by choosing an animal (he chose penguin) so I looked up a fun penguin craft (thank you Pinterest!) and we did this first. Note: here's a link to the craft we made. I probably won't be using this website again because it had so many ads and
Ways Adults with Autism Cope with Stress
I recently read an interesting research article that discussed coping strategies used by adults with “high-functioning” autism. What I appreciated about this article was that they interviewed adults with autism directly. While we know that self-reported data is not always accurate, I think it’s important to consider the perspectives of individuals who actually have autism. So, I’m grateful that more research like this is being conducted. I’ll share a few points I found partic
Teaching the Concept of Money, Part 2
Note: you can read part 1 of this blog post here: https://www.autismhomeschoolsuccess.com/single-post/2019/07/16/Teaching-the-Concept-of-Money One of my favorite college courses that I teach is about the transition from high school to adulthood for students with autism. One of the topics that we discuss in this class is financial and money-related skills. Many of the students in class shared how they start teaching this skill at elementary ages by having students earn “classr
